World of Warcraft (WoW) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment taking place in the fictional world of Azeroth, the world that previous Blizzard titles in the Realtime Stategy (RTS) Warcraft series. For more information about the game itself, visit [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ the Official World of Warcraft website].

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment taking place in the fictional world of Azeroth, the world that previous Blizzard titles in the Realtime Stategy (RTS) Warcraft series. For more information about the game itself, visit [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/ the Official World of Warcraft website].

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Some of this information was provided by http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine which is the best general source of information on WoW on Wine.

Some of this information was provided by http://www.wowwiki.com/Linux/Wine which is the best general source of information on WoW on Wine.

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==Introduction==

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As Blizzard so kindly created World of Warcraft with OpenGL support, we don't need [http://www.transgaming.com/products_linux.php Transgaming's Cedega], which is a non-free version of Wine with better DirectX support. Wine has as good, or better, OpenGL support than Cedega, and doesn't cost you a penny.

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Running WoW is slightly more difficult than some other games with Wine, but still relatively easy. It's quite possible that you will need to patch Wine to work with WoW, however, even this process is rather simple with Arch. The following guide will explain it all, step by step.

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If you do choose to purchase Cedega, which runs some games that Wine does not, for example, Guild Wars, the process is almost identical. I use Cedega myself because Wine currently doesn't cope with my Wireless USB keyboard well.

==Installing Wine==

==Installing Wine==

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See [[Wine]].

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Wine now no longer requires it's own special "World of Warcraft" version. The one in the repositories works fine (currently 1.3.14-1). Install both wine and unzip, which you will need later.

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pacman -S unzip wine

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If installing on x86_64 you also need the lib32 driver utils installed. Make sure you enable [multilib]

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pacman -S unzip wine lib32-nvidia-utils

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Or for Intel install '''lib32-intel-dri''' from [multilib]

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Or for ATI install '''lib32-catalyst-utils''' from the AUR.

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==Installing Cedega==

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Cedega 6.01 is available in the AUR. To get the cedega program you will need to subscribe to Transgaming ; this currently costs about £3 per month.

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You also need dbus-python, which isn't a dependency of Cedega.

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pacman -S dbus-python

==Installing the Game==

==Installing the Game==

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=====Not able to agree to terms=====

=====Not able to agree to terms=====

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In case you can't see the license text, you probably have to install gecko, since the license is rendered as HTML.

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In case you can not see the license text, you probably have to install gecko, since the license is rendered as HTML.

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To install it ( on 64 bit enable [multilib] )

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To install it (on 64 bit enable [multilib])

pacman -S wine_gecko

pacman -S wine_gecko

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In some versions of Wine, you can not agree to the terms even though you scrolled down. Try to compile the latest Wine from source. Or use a version of Wine it is known to work with, i.e. '''1.1.39''' (please add more here).

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In some versions of Wine, you can not agree to the terms even though you scrolled down. Try to compile the latest Wine from source. Or use a version of wine it is known to work with, i.e. '''1.1.39''' (please add more here).

=====Wine crashes while reading terms=====

=====Wine crashes while reading terms=====

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===Copying the CDs to a folder===

===Copying the CDs to a folder===

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This method's goal is to copy the 5 install CDs to a folder. This seems to solve problems with deciding whether a CD is mounted and needs changing or not ; I think this is a fundamental problem because Windows doesn't have the basic concept of mounting and unmounting drives.

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This method's goal is to copy the 5 install CDs to a folder. This seems to solve problems with deciding whether a CD is mounted and needs changing or not ; I think this is a fundamental problem because Windows does not have the basic concept of mounting and unmounting drives.

mkdir /mnt/temp

mkdir /mnt/temp

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Copy the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft directory from Windows to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft.

Copy the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft directory from Windows to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft.

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Example (assuming your windows partition is mounted at <tt>/mnt/windows</tt> and you are in your home directory) (Quotes are needed because of the spaces in the file names):

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Example (assuming your windows partition is mounted at {{Ic|/mnt/windows}} and you are in your home directory) (Quotes are needed because of the spaces in the file names):

This will ensure that Wine knows about your WoW and will be able to configure it properly, and also ensures that WoW won't notice it has even been moved at all.

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This will ensure that Wine knows about your WoW and will be able to configure it properly, and also ensures that WoW will not notice it has even been moved at all.

Now that you have WoW installed, skip down to [[#Post-Installation]].

Now that you have WoW installed, skip down to [[#Post-Installation]].

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When it asks for the next cd, simply unmount your CD drive and mount the next CD. Make absolutely sure that you mount the CD before telling the installer to load the CD, or it may make the installation fail. If you have any issues installing using the CDs, please read the next section.

When it asks for the next cd, simply unmount your CD drive and mount the next CD. Make absolutely sure that you mount the CD before telling the installer to load the CD, or it may make the installation fail. If you have any issues installing using the CDs, please read the next section.

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The WoW installation uses all 5 CDs, so it will take a while. Go outside and get some fresh air while the CD loads, because soon you won't have any "free time". :P

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The WoW installation uses all 5 CDs, so it will take a while. Go outside and get some fresh air while the CD loads, because soon you will not have any "free time". :P

===New Installation from DVD===

===New Installation from DVD===

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unzip wow-1.12.x-to-2.0.1-engb-patch-3.zip

unzip wow-1.12.x-to-2.0.1-engb-patch-3.zip

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The simplest way to install the patches seems to be to run World of Warcraft. It detects that you have downloaded the patches and doesn't do it again.

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The simplest way to install the patches seems to be to run World of Warcraft. It detects that you have downloaded the patches and does not do it again.

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/

wine WoW.exe

wine WoW.exe

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You have to keep going round 5 times, it does get a bit dull, but it's fairly reliable. Accept the offer to Install the Gecko renderer when it comes up on your first patch install.

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You have to keep going round 5 times, it does get a bit dull, but it is fairly reliable. Accept the offer to Install the Gecko renderer when it comes up on your first patch install.

The original Wiki says you can install patches with Wine as follows:

The original Wiki says you can install patches with Wine as follows:

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If the Launcher (it displays a little box with News and Play) seems to stop when downloading, close its window and re-run WoW.exe

If the Launcher (it displays a little box with News and Play) seems to stop when downloading, close its window and re-run WoW.exe

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==Installing in Cedega==

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'''UPDATED for 4.3'''

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Installing in Cedega is done by running the program from the menus, selecting Install, typing "World of Warcraft" in the Game name, selecting the WoW profile, navigating to the Installer.exe file using browse, and then clicking continue.

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===Fixes for Cedega===

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On my Gnome system, Cedega will not run using Alsa, it is necessary to switch to OSS.

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The current version of Cedega requires you to edit the following file

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gedit .cedega/configuration_profiles/cedega_6.0.1

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If the Launcher crashes when downloading patches start backgrounddownloader and deactivate peer to peer and restart the launcher. Now everything will download and install.

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and add the following line to the [d3dgl] section

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"VertexShadersLevel" = "1.1"

==Configuration==

==Configuration==

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SET gxApi "opengl"

SET gxApi "opengl"

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This is a REQUIREMENT for Wine, but is not required for Cedega.

===Resolution and Colour depth===

===Resolution and Colour depth===

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SET gxWindow "1"

SET gxWindow "1"

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===Black textures issue===

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If you're using an Intel graphics card and you can see black textures in the game (or the game crashes in OpenGL mode), you should eable S3TC texture compression support.

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It can be enabled through {{Pkg|driconf}} or by installing {{Pkg|libtxc_dxtn}}.

===Sound Issues===

===Sound Issues===

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====Stuttering or Static Sound====

====Stuttering or Static Sound====

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Run <tt>winecfg</tt>, and in the "Audio" tab, selected "OSS" as the sound driver, using "Standard" hardware acceleration and driver emulation enabled.

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Run {{Ic|winecfg}}, and in the "Audio" tab, selected "OSS" as the sound driver, using "Standard" hardware acceleration and driver emulation enabled.

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You can also set WoW to run at a higher "nice level", which will usually improve sound performance (<tt>renice</tt> must be run as root):

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You can also set WoW to run at a higher "nice level", which will usually improve sound performance ({{Ic|renice}} must be run as root):

sudo renice -15 `pidof WoW.exe`

sudo renice -15 `pidof WoW.exe`

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==A customised version of Wine==

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If you wish to compile wine from source yourself, you will need to edit the Wine PKGBUILD.

'''NOTE:''' You can get the <tt>wine-$pkgver-wow_fixes.patch</tt> from here: http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=4031

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Now execute the following commands to build and install your custom wine:

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cd /var/abs/local/wine

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makepkg -w `pwd`

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pacman -U wine-*.pkg.tar.gz

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You now have a working version of Wine!

==Performance Tweaks==

==Performance Tweaks==

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1. Here is a performance tweak that can boost your FPS significantly (everything without quotes):

1. Here is a performance tweak that can boost your FPS significantly (everything without quotes):

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- Open wine's version of the registry editor by running "regedit"

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- Open Wine's version of the registry editor by running "regedit"

- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\

- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\

- Select the "Wine" folder, right-click onto the folder symbol and select New-> Key and rename it to "OpenGL"

- Select the "Wine" folder, right-click onto the folder symbol and select New-> Key and rename it to "OpenGL"

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That was it, close the registry editor again, your changes will be saved automatically.

That was it, close the registry editor again, your changes will be saved automatically.

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2. If you are finding it annoying that turning your character by let's say 90 degree takes n seconds normally, but n+m seconds in pupolated areas (in other words: that the polygon count of your surroundings affects the camera turning speed), apply something to "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object", like let's say a "2", so it looks like this: "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object2". You will still have the performance boost of the above tweak, but with a smoother feeling.

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2. If you are finding it annoying that turning your character by let us say 90 degree takes n seconds normally, but n+m seconds in pupolated areas (in other words: that the polygon count of your surroundings affects the camera turning speed), apply something to "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object", like let us say a "2", so it looks like this: "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object2". You will still have the performance boost of the above tweak, but with a smoother feeling.

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==Kernel Timing Bug==

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If you are having problems with choppy video every 15 seconds or so, it is related to the kernel scheduler. There is a custom version of the kernel in AUR [http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=17195 here], or you can roll your own with ABS.

You can also find [http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?bIsQueue=false&bIsRejected=false&sClass=comment&sAction=add&sReturnTo=http%3A%2F%2Fappdb.winehq.org%2FobjectManager.php%3FsClass%3Dversion%26amp%3BiId%3D25610&sTitle=Post+new+comment&iVersionId=25610&iThread=80686 this] comment on WineHQ very useful. It can double your FPS.

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cd abs/kernel26

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gedit config

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At this point, look for CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG. Change

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===For NVIDIA users===

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As of version 310.14 of the nvidia driver, an option exists for threaded OpenGL performance optimization. WoW benefits greatly from utilizing this.

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# CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG is not set

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(Sidenote: this makes the 'RGL' patch/library/hack redundant for nVidia users)

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to

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CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG=y

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and save. Repeat for config.x86_64.

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After the config files are changed, run

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Exporting __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 enables the optimizations. Example of launching WoW with these optimizations:

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md5sum config

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__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine Wow.exe -opengl

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md5sum config.x86_64

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Once you've confirmed the game works well for you (applies to any game, not just WoW) you can turn off debugging output to potentially improve performance further:

If running the game in Direct3D mode, in conjunction with the above optimization, compiling Wine with the [http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11674#c263 ''"Use glBufferSubDataARB for dynamic buffer uploads"''] patch should yield a further performance increase. This patch does not appear to increase performance in OpenGL mode, though OpenGL mode generally results in higher framerates anyway... albeit at the cost of the game's more advanced Direct3D eye candy.

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ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/kernel26/${_patchname}.bz2

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# the main kernel config files

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config config.x86_64

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# standard config files for mkinitcpio ramdisk

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kernel26.preset)

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and

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md5sums=('5169d01c405bc3f866c59338e217968c'

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'003e89dd71b32ae9b93cd1601da3b1b0'

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'499d4841fbff665d0d0c768513018ba8'

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'5b5c7a9266af17d6ca3ebff420cd5381'

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'25584700a0a679542929c4bed31433b6')

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Config and config.x86_64 are the 3rd and 4th entries in md5sums. Replace with your newly generated md5sums and save. Run makepkg as per normal.

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After compiling and installing the new kernel, it may be necessary to compile new custom video drivers. For nVidia, see [[NVIDIA#How to install NVIDIA Driver with custom kernel|here]].

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'''NOTE: You MUST turn off Wine's debugging to benefit from this'''

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WINEDEBUG=-all __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine Wow.exe

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Once the new kernel has been compiled and installed, add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf:

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kernel.sched_features=21

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kernel.sched_batch_wakeup_granularity_ns=25000000

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kernel.sched_min_granularity_ns=4000000

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and reboot.

==Links==

==Links==

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* [http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=6482 World of Warcraft in the wine APPDB]

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[http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=6482 World of Warcraft in the wine APPDB]

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* [http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page WoWWiki]

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* [http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors Patch Mirrors]

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[http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page WoWWiki]

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[http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors Patch Mirrors]

Revision as of 13:49, 23 August 2013

This article or section is out of date.

Reason:please use the first argument of the template to provide a brief explanation. (Discuss in Talk:World of Warcraft#)

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment taking place in the fictional world of Azeroth, the world that previous Blizzard titles in the Realtime Stategy (RTS) Warcraft series. For more information about the game itself, visit the Official World of Warcraft website.

This article will describe how install and run in on Arch Linux using Wine.

Installing Wine

Installing the Game

There are five options for installing World of Warcraft.

Downloading and installing via Blizzard's client

The most straightforward way of installing World of Warcraft on Linux is usually this method, while it may not be the fastest. On slower connections, however, you may not wish to use this method due to the fact that you will have to download the entire game, including patches.

It is known to work with Wine 1.1.39 which can be downloaded off Wine's website and compiled. However, you may wish to try with the newest version from the extra section, installed via Pacman like so:

# pacman -S wine

Downloading the Client

First step is to download the client.
European users can download it off the european World of Warcraft website here, while people from the United States would probably want to download the US client.

Installing the Game

Once the client is downloaded run the file with Wine:

wine InstallWoW.exe

A window will pop up asking you which product to install. If you choose the latest expansion, it will install the base game and any previous expansions as well.

Troubleshooting

Not able to agree to terms

In case you can not see the license text, you probably have to install gecko, since the license is rendered as HTML.

To install it (on 64 bit enable [multilib])

pacman -S wine_gecko

In some versions of Wine, you can not agree to the terms even though you scrolled down. Try to compile the latest Wine from source. Or use a version of Wine it is known to work with, i.e. 1.1.39 (please add more here).

Wine crashes while reading terms

Wine crashes as soon as the terms which must be agreed to install the game opens. This is because the installer fetches the terms from a website somewhere, and therefore uses a browser implementation to show them. Wine's implementation of this is named [Gecko http://wiki.winehq.org/Gecko], and this must be installed in order for the installation to work!

Copying the CDs to a folder

This method's goal is to copy the 5 install CDs to a folder. This seems to solve problems with deciding whether a CD is mounted and needs changing or not ; I think this is a fundamental problem because Windows does not have the basic concept of mounting and unmounting drives.

Copying an Existing Installation

The third is to simply copy an exisiting WoW installation from a Windows drive to Linux.

NOTE: If you do not alreay have Wine installed, or have not run World of Warcraft with Wine before, you should skip down to #Installing Wine, then come back to this section. Please DO NOT SKIP this section unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing.

Copy the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft directory from Windows to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft.

Example (assuming your windows partition is mounted at /mnt/windows and you are in your home directory) (Quotes are needed because of the spaces in the file names):

New Installation from CD

NOTE: We will assume that your Wine CD-ROM drive is "D:\" for this guide. Please use the correct letter as set up in the #Installing Wine section.

Insert the first CD, mount it, and start the installation with:

wine "D:\Installer.exe"

When it asks for the next cd, simply unmount your CD drive and mount the next CD. Make absolutely sure that you mount the CD before telling the installer to load the CD, or it may make the installation fail. If you have any issues installing using the CDs, please read the next section.

The WoW installation uses all 5 CDs, so it will take a while. Go outside and get some fresh air while the CD loads, because soon you will not have any "free time". :P

New Installation from DVD

NOTE: Note that on some WoW DVD's the installer executable is hidden and you need to mount the disc with the 'unhide' option. To do this type in a terminal:

mount -t iso9660 -o ro,unhide /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom/

Insert first the DVD. If it will be mounted automatically - just unmount.

# umount /media/dvd

Now mount manually

# mount -t iso9660 /dev/dvd0 /mnt/dvd

Now you will find the Install.exe on the DVD

~ wine /mnt/dvd/Installer.exe

Installing Patches

Now we will need to update WoW. As of Noevember 30th 2010, the latest version of World of Warcraft is 4.0.3.13329. This will change over time, of course. The best place I have found to access the latest patches is http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors

I think the simplest way of updating World of Warcraft is to download the patches (links are at the Patch Wiki) and copy them into the working directory for World of Warcraft. I have had problems with the Blizzard Downloaders either not working at all, or working very slowly. If you download them, you can reuse them if you reinstall or have an accident.

When you have downloaded the files into their own folder for neatness, copy these patches into the World of Warcraft working directory.

The simplest way to install the patches seems to be to run World of Warcraft. It detects that you have downloaded the patches and does not do it again.

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/World\ of\ Warcraft/
wine WoW.exe

You have to keep going round 5 times, it does get a bit dull, but it is fairly reliable. Accept the offer to Install the Gecko renderer when it comes up on your first patch install.

The original Wiki says you can install patches with Wine as follows:

wine wow-VERSION-LANG-patch.exe

This method is currently still working.

If the Launcher (it displays a little box with News and Play) seems to stop when downloading, close its window and re-run WoW.exe

UPDATED for 4.3

If the Launcher crashes when downloading patches start backgrounddownloader and deactivate peer to peer and restart the launcher. Now everything will download and install.

Configuration

The World of Warcraft configuration file is kept in the WTF directory (do Blizzard have a sense of humour ?)

Edit it with

gedit WTF/Config.wtf

Using OpenGL

Add the following line which makes WoW run in OpenGL (hurrah !) instead of grotty old DirectX Mode (boo).

SET gxApi "opengl"

Resolution and Colour depth

You can change the following two lines to set the default WoW resolution. I have a 19" Monitor so I can use the following.

SET gxColorBits "24"
SET gxResolution "1440x900"

Windowing

You can run in a Window by setting this, which is confirmed to work in Wine.

SET gxWindow "1"

Black textures issue

If you're using an Intel graphics card and you can see black textures in the game (or the game crashes in OpenGL mode), you should eable S3TC texture compression support.
It can be enabled through driconf or by installing libtxc_dxtn.

Sound Issues

Configuring the Buffer

If the sound makes a horrendous racket with squeaks and white noise try :

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"
SET SoundBufferSize "100"

Stuttering or Static Sound

Run winecfg, and in the "Audio" tab, selected "OSS" as the sound driver, using "Standard" hardware acceleration and driver emulation enabled.

You can also set WoW to run at a higher "nice level", which will usually improve sound performance (renice must be run as root):

sudo renice -15 `pidof WoW.exe`

Performance Tweaks

1. Here is a performance tweak that can boost your FPS significantly (everything without quotes):

- Open Wine's version of the registry editor by running "regedit"
- Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\
- Select the "Wine" folder, right-click onto the folder symbol and select New-> Key and rename it to "OpenGL"
- Select the OpenGL-Key, then right-click into the right-hand pane, chose New-> String Value and hit enter
- Rename "New Value #1" to "DisabledExtensions"
- Double-Click on the renamed Key and enter "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" into the "value" field

That was it, close the registry editor again, your changes will be saved automatically.

2. If you are finding it annoying that turning your character by let us say 90 degree takes n seconds normally, but n+m seconds in pupolated areas (in other words: that the polygon count of your surroundings affects the camera turning speed), apply something to "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object", like let us say a "2", so it looks like this: "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object2". You will still have the performance boost of the above tweak, but with a smoother feeling.

You can also find this comment on WineHQ very useful. It can double your FPS.

For NVIDIA users

As of version 310.14 of the nvidia driver, an option exists for threaded OpenGL performance optimization. WoW benefits greatly from utilizing this.

(Sidenote: this makes the 'RGL' patch/library/hack redundant for nVidia users)

Exporting __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 enables the optimizations. Example of launching WoW with these optimizations:

__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 wine Wow.exe -opengl

Once you've confirmed the game works well for you (applies to any game, not just WoW) you can turn off debugging output to potentially improve performance further:

NVIDIA users and Direct3D mode

If running the game in Direct3D mode, in conjunction with the above optimization, compiling Wine with the "Use glBufferSubDataARB for dynamic buffer uploads" patch should yield a further performance increase. This patch does not appear to increase performance in OpenGL mode, though OpenGL mode generally results in higher framerates anyway... albeit at the cost of the game's more advanced Direct3D eye candy.